Don’t Wait, Write When You Can

Recently, I was asked by a young woman why I waited so long to begin writing, to which I replied, I didn’t wait.

I’ve always written.  When I was a small child, I wrote little stories – mostly based on fairy tales I’d read – and poems.  When I was a teen, I wrote, usually as an assignment from my English teacher, but sometimes because I just wanted to.  Also, as a lot of teens did (perhaps still do), I kept a diary from time to time.

Then, I fell in love and began marriage and motherhood when I was eighteen.  Not a good choice on my part, but, at the time, nobody could tell me it wasn’t.  Ten years and three children later, I was divorced.

In between taking care of my kids, my household, and sometimes working two jobs but always at least one, and all the overtime I could get (not to mention going to school at the community college!), there wasn’t much time for writing though I would often get ideas for a story and scribble them down on whatever was handy.  Then I’d put them in a drawer and somehow, over the years, I never got time to finish any.

Then, six years ago, I retired (yayyy!) and three years ago I found one of the few stories on which I’d actually managed to get several thousand words written.  I had transcribed it into Word, and saved and moved it every time I got a new computer.

Gone were the days I ran from one job to another, or stayed late at my fulltime one and dragged home so tired I’d fall asleep in the shower, or try to read a book only to wake up with it on my face (though I still managed to get in some reading – couldn’t have made it without that!).

As I read over that unfinished story, it occurred to me that I now had time to write, and a strange thing began to happen.  It started to seem as if the characters were speaking to me, telling me the story, urging me to write it down.  So, I did, and before I knew it, I found I’d written the first book in my Boucher’s World series, which now consists of a trilogy, a full-length, stand-alone novel, two novellas, two novelettes, and a short story.

I had written enough material for several stories in that particular universe, and even now, those characters call out to me, though I now have another series (the Juri Turner Spaceships and Magic series ) for which I’ve published book one and am halfway through book two, pulling at me for my attention.  I’ve written other stories (the Cady and Sam werewolf stories) with more to come.

I did wait to publish but that was mainly because I wasn’t writing to publish.  I was writing because I couldn’t not write (yeah, I know that ain’t grammatically correct as auto-correct just pointed out to me, but it’s true, so shut up, auto-correct!), but after a while I did sort of want someone other than family and friends to read my stories so as soon as I discovered I could publish as an independent author, and for practically nothing, I did (I’m now into that fixed-income thing, sooo…practically nothing, or free, is good).

The point is, and I repeat: I did not wait to write.  I guess you could say I kind of dodged between the raindrops and skated around potholes and wrote when I could.

If you want to write, if you have to write, then do it.  Any way you can.

And I hope to write until I’m dead.  And even afterward if I can swing it.